Search results for john Dewey's imaginative

John Dewey's Imaginative Vision of Teaching explores key philosophical topics in John Dewey’s work, including epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, and relates them to teacher practice and education policy. Each chapter begins with theory and ends with practical implications. While there are numerous books on Dewey, there are relatively few that connect his philosophy of education to actual practice. By linking primary fields of philosophy with classroom teaching and education policy, Boyles suggests that the binary between theory and practice is a false chasm that can and should be bridged if teaching and learning are to change into more dynamic, reflexive, and authentic interactions.

Perfect for courses such as: Becoming a Teacher | Applying Theory to Practice | John Dewey and U.S. Schools | Historical and Philosophical Ideas In Practice | Progressive Teaching

Some hundred years after John Dewey worked to illuminate what it means to educate and how public education serves as the bedrock of democracy, his seminal Democracy and Education speaks urgently not only to critical contemporary educational issues but to contemporary political issues as well. As mania for testing forces a steadily narrowing curriculum, Dewey explains why democracy cannot “flourish” if “the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses.” As such utilitarian subject matter is increasingly placed online, isolating individual students and their electronic screens, he insists that education happens not through direct instruction but “indirectly by means of the environment” where members of a community engage in meaningful tasks. As the American population appears increasingly subject to rhetorical manipulation and ideological extremism, Dewey imagines the possibility of education cultivating “habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.” Insightful and inspiring, Dewey’s classic reintroduces readers to educational and political possibilities hard to remember as political and corporate forces to work reshape American public schools in the service of global profit rather than democratic life.

Myers Education Press’s Timely Classics in Education offer readers the opportunity to return to the original works of giants whose influence on education have persisted through the years. Critical introductions to each work offer information on the context of the original work as well as insights into current relevance. For readers unfamiliar with each text, the introductions provide entrée to the work; for experienced readers, the series offers an opportunity to return to original works untainted by the distortions of decades of interpretation. Unlike poorly produced facsimile editions, Timely Classics are high-quality products. They can be adopted for use in many types of education classes.

Perfect for courses in: Social Foundations of Education, Political and Social Foundations of Education, Foundations of American Education, Foundations of Education, Introduction to Education Theory and Policy, Philosophy and Education, History of American Education, and The Philosophy of John Dewey. 

Contemporary political and socioeconomic conditions largely characterized by corruption and inequity have added new urgency to recurring calls for reorienting American public schools to their historic purpose: educating a citizenry both equipped and motivated to serve as the ultimate guardians of democracy.

While the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, as well as the founders of public schools, including Horace Mann, explicitly stated that rationale, perhaps no one has done more than John Dewey to detail the inextricable relationship between education and democratic society. In Moral Principles in Education and My Pedagogic Creed, Dewey reminds readers of public schools’ original purpose, identifying specific educational principles and practices that either promote or undermine their essential democratic goals.

“There cannot be two sets of ethical principles,” he says, “one for life in the school, and the other for life outside of the school.” In these works and through such caveats, Dewey offers readers both the motivation to engage in the struggle for a new emphasis on educating for democratic citizenship and the guidance necessary to translate his theory into effective practice. 

Perfect for courses such as: Philosophy of Education, Teaching Methods, Principles of Teaching and Learning, Education Policy, Education Leadership, Education Foundations, Curriculum Theory and History, Curriculum Design, The Philosophy of John Dewey, and School Change/Reform.

Literary Imagination and Professional Knowledge: Using Literature in Teacher Education establishes a foundation for expanding the use of literature in teacher education curricula. The contributors to this collection have a wide variety of education and experience, thus bringing a richness to the content of the volume.

Literature can be a valuable means for illuminating subject matter in college courses focused on educational psychology, educational foundations, human development, educational assessment, and other areas critical to the development of future teachers. When literary excerpts are incorporated into the presentation of content, the resulting connections can serve to enhance--in both quality and scope--student understanding and classroom discussions.

This book is intended to provide specific suggestions and outlines for incorporating literature (e.g., fiction, poetry, and narrative) in teacher education courses. A variety of genres, historical contexts, and specific applications are represented. Among the literary works highlighted are Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende, the Gilgamesh legend, the poetry of Jason Reynolds, the writings and artwork of William Blake, and classic folk and fairy tales. They are used as frameworks for introducing or exemplifying concepts typically covered in teacher education curricula. One chapter also describes a research investigation into the effects of using literature on pre-service teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about cultural diversity.

Perfect for courses such as: Educational Psychology │ Educational Foundations │ Child Development │ Teaching Methods - Elementary │ Teaching Methods - Secondary │ Student Teaching

A 2020 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner
A 2019 AESA Critics' Choice Award Winner

Conservative ideologues have sought to shift the focus from the collective good to the individual good and to redirect the purposes and aims of education away from public benefit and in favor of private enterprise. As such, market-oriented, privatized, and standardized approaches to education reform have worked toward achieving that goal. This book is a primer on how the political right is utilizing various aspects of philanthropy and the political process to influence educational policymaking.

In 1971, corporate lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a detailed memo that galvanized a small group of conservative philanthropists to create an organizational structure and fifty-year plan to alter the political landscape of the United States. Funded with significant “dark money,” the fruits of their labor are evident today in the current political context and sharp cultural divisions in society. Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective Resistance examines the ideologies behind the philanthropic efforts in education from the 1970s until today. Authors examine specific strategies philanthropists have used to impact both educational policy and practice in the U.S. as well as the legal and policy context in which these initiatives have thrived. The book, aimed for a broad audience of educators, provides a depth of knowledge of philanthropic funding as well as specific strategies to incite collective resistance to the current context of hyperaccountability, privatization of schooling at all levels, and attempts to move the U.S. further away from a commitment to the collective good.

Perfect for courses such as: Critical and Contemporary Issues in Education, Education Policy, Educational Policy Analysis, Social Foundations of Education, Philanthropy, Public Policy & Community Change, Philanthropic Studies, Sociology of Education, Politics of Education, Current Issues in Education, Government and the Mass Media, Polarization of American Politics.

2024 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner

Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools is for systems leaders who lead our country’s school districts, charter management organizations, and educational nonprofits and government agencies, as well as for those who train these system leaders in our graduate schools of education. The strategies for school improvement detailed in this book are based on the theories of W. Edwards Deming, who was known as the father of the quality movement and was hugely influential in post-WWII Japan. He is most well-known for his theories of management.

Win-Win offers real-world strategies to education leaders of improvement, based on Demings’ System of Profound Knowledge. A leader of improvement does not need to be expert in the four components of profound knowledge, but they do need to understand the basic theory, their interconnectedness, and why they are necessary for these efforts. Win-Win provides this basic understanding. This book equips the reader with the knowledge and skills needed to harness the power of the System of Profound Knowledge to improve the performance of schools systems, students, and teachers. It can be used in a variety of classrooms in Colleges of Education, and it is the perfect teaching tool in professional development efforts.

Perfect for courses such as: Organizational Change; Strategies of Educational Leadership; School/District Improvement Using Data Analysis; Supervision Theory and Practice; Theory, Research, & Leadership; Transformational Systems Leadership; Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations of Leadership; The Philosophy of Scientific Knowledge; Systemic Educational Reform; Applied Improvement Science Investigations

“Who’s Gonna Water My Tomatoes?”: School Gardens, Kitchens, and the Search for Educational Authenticity updates an old concept for our modern age, utilizing school gardens and culinary kitchens where students grow, prepare, and eat their own food.

Over a century ago, the educational philosopher John Dewey proposed reforming education around the needs of the whole child, emphasizing academic learning and the child's social needs for effective participation in a democratic society. In Dewey’s view, children would best learn by engaging in authentic experiences that would introduce, complement, and complete their regular classroom experiences. Dewey talked about school gardens and kitchens as two specific laboratories where children could apply what they were learning in school in daily life. Today, the tensions between experiential learning and the more rote learning often found in regular classrooms remain. Educators increasingly find themselves accountable to the narrow performance pressures imposed by standardized testing, pressures that often squeeze out the joys and possibilities for more authentic and engaging learning found in real-world experiences.

This book explores Dewey’s philosophy with particular attention given to experiential learning’s relationship to gardens and kitchens. The school garden and kitchen movement itself has ebbed and flowed over the last hundred years in response to changing societal and educational pressures. This history leads to the present day, where the edible schoolyard movement is experiencing a new spring as educators, parents, and school communities find value in edible schoolyard’s possibilities for providing more wholistic education that better meets the academic, social, and emotional needs of students. The book focuses on a network of edible schoolyards by introducing educators, teachers, principals, and staff who are making edible schoolyards happen today. Their vision and motivations form in their favorite lessons and in the connections between garden and kitchen experiences to the more traditional subject matter favored on state tests. Suggestions and resources for starting new edible schoolyards, including suggested recipes, are provided for those who want to get growing with their own edible schoolyards.

Perfect for courses such as: Educational Reform; Educational History; Educational Philosophy; Educational Leadership; Curriculum Development and Transformation; Experiential Learning; Project Based Learning; and Educational Policy Environments

At a moment when brawls are breaking out at school board meetings and state officials are increasingly issuing curricular mandates, it’s possible that this text’s central question is more important than ever: How is it that given good intentions and hard work among education professionals, things in schools can go so very wrong?

As in the first edition, Hinchey and Konkol suggest that unspoken and misleading assumptions can produce choices, decisions and policies with disastrous consequences for kids. They tease out such assumptions on the key issues of school goals, curriculum, education for citizenship, discipline and school reform, inviting readers to question the taken-for-granted in order to better align intentions and outcomes. Such contemporary issues as book banning and parents’ movements are presented not as isolated controversies, but instead in their historical, cultural and political contexts.

Designed for both undergraduate and graduate classrooms, the text applies to a wide range of studies related to public education, including its theory, policy, history and politics. Without proselytizing, the text asks readers to think for themselves and articulate their own commitments guided by end-of-chapter questions, some intended for all readers and some specifically for experienced professionals. Suggested additional readings, websites and videos invite further exploration of the topics under discussion and offer still more food for thought.

Perfect for courses such as: Social Foundations of Education, Foundations of Education, Introduction to Education/Intro to Urban Education, Education Policy Foundations, Contemporary Issues in US Schools, Education Theory and Policy, Issues in Curriculum Education Studies, Social Issues and Education, and Education and Society

Moments & Movements: Counterstories for Critical Asian American+ Studies in Education is a collection of counterstories born from community and shared commitments to challenge the ways diverse diasporas and experiences of people from the Asian continent and the Pacific Ocean are largely made invisible, silenced, and erased. By defying reductionist narratives, the collection highlights stories built upon generations of struggle, resistance, advocacy, and joy, that impart wisdom for the current moment and for Asian American+ movements in the future, particularly movements based in education. The book’s topics, located at the nexus of multiple and interconnected fields, such as education, race/ethnic studies, policy and community studies, have broad appeal to a cross-section of university academics; P-12 teachers and leaders; and community educators and activists.

Using the framing of Critical Asian American+ Studies, the chapters in this volume emphasize criticality as central to the work of educators committed to more just futures. The plus (+) symbol in “Asian American+” highlights the volume’s efforts at diverse inclusion and openness to various groups under a broad umbrella geographic category, including voices of various Pasifika, Arab and Middle Eastern communities, without eliding their distinct histories, cultures, politics, and experiences or erasing the tensions within and across the broader category of Asian American studies.

The book is organized thematically into four sections that reflect key moments in an ongoing movement. This organization acknowledges that readers may be at different points in their journeys towards developing more critical perspectives or knowledge of Asian American, Arab/Middle Eastern American, and Pasifika peoples’ experiences in education. The first section, "The Moment We Begin", focuses on foundational beginnings, telling stories of how the authors made important first steps in creating the change they wished to see in their educational spheres. The second section, "Building an Inclusive Movement", examines how educators sustain and deepen their work within and outside of classrooms. The third section, "Extending the Movement", then looks at Critical Asian American+ Studies outside of classrooms and schools by attending to educational leadership, families and teacher identities, policy arenas, and educational, cultural, and community activism. Finally, in the fourth section, "Envisioning New Worlds", chapters attend to what justice-focused, future-oriented movements might look like for Critical Asian American+ Studies.

All too often, critical community-grounded work can feel daunting. This collection pushes beyond prescribed borders that separate our communities and separate us into our own educational spheres (e.g. P-12, higher education, teacher education) and roles (professor, teacher, principal, student). As one of the few edited collections with such diverse perspectives, this collection provides multiple paths forward in Asian American, Arab/Middle Eastern American, and Pasifika Studies, inspires with its counterstories of struggle and success, and challenges readers to consider their own next steps.

Perfect for courses such as: Asian Americans in Education; Critical Studies in Education; Multicultural Education/Sociocultural Foundations in Education; Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies; Social Justice in Education; Critical Pedagogy and Education; Urban Education; Race, Ethnicity, and Education; Introduction to Education; School and Society